How to Use TradingView Footprint to Spot Big Players (Real Trade)

Hey guys, it’s Dale here, and in this video, I want to show you how to follow big players using Order Flow. I’ll demonstrate this using a trade I took yesterday on the British pound.

What you see before you is the TradingView software. First, before we jump into Order Flow, we need to identify a key level around which we’ll trade using Order Flow. For that, I’ll use the 30-minute chart and Volume Profile.

So, here is the 30-minute chart of the British pound futures. I need to scroll back a bit to show you what this resistance level was based on, okay? Then we’ll jump into Order Flow, which will be the main part of the video.

So, here is a little volume cluster. Those volumes were formed during this little rotation, and from there, we saw this strong sell-off. That’s important because it looks like sellers were accumulating their short positions here. We can see that on the Volume Profile, and from there, they pushed the price downwards.

There was also quite a huge Fair Value Gap from Smart Money Concepts, beginning exactly at my trading level of 1.3443. Okay, so that’s the reasoning behind this resistance level.

I marked this level on my chart, and then I waited for a pullback, waiting for the price to reach that level. And it reached that level yesterday. It actually reached that level while I was running my live room. So, I was doing this live, and when the price reached this level, I had my Order Flow layout open and was watching for the big players to jump in.

So, let me show you. This is how we identified the level, and now we’ll switch to Order Flow and see what happened around that key level.

So, let me go full screen here. This red line is the level I was looking to go short from.

By the way, I haven’t mentioned this, but this is the TradingView Footprint software with my custom-made look. If you guys want your charts to look like mine, I’ll leave a little guide below this video that you can follow to set up your charts so they look exactly like mine.

Anyway, the price was moving towards the level, and when it hit the level, I was waiting for some kind of confirmation there. Now, let’s cover the footprints one by one and see what we can find out about the big players here.

Let’s start with this five-minute footprint. What happened in this five-minute footprint was that Delta was positive. That means aggressive buyers were stronger than aggressive sellers. And when the price is rising, that’s normal. But what I actually wanted to see was negative Delta because I wanted to see aggressive sellers.

At this point, we only have aggressive buyers. We can see those strong buyers here, as well as in here. As you can see, there are also a couple of imbalances. That means buyers were much stronger than sellers here, here, and here. Those are imbalances, okay?

So, everything at this point is telling me that the price should continue to go up. So, no confirmation yet. Well, there was one thing. Somebody big entered here. But at this point, it looked like the buyers were simply dominating, okay?

So, at this point, it wouldn’t be too wise to enter the trade because it looked like sellers weren’t really respecting this level or jumping in. But let’s take a look at the next footprint.

This footprint is different because we have negative Delta. That means that, in this five-minute footprint, sellers were actually dominating. An important thing is that there was also a divergence between price and Delta.

See, at this point, the price was still going up. This was a bullish candle, but at the same time, Delta was negative. My software, which I’ll be releasing in a couple of days, prints this little sign here, an exclamation mark, telling us that there’s a divergence. The price is going up, but Delta is going down, right? So, that’s a sign that sellers are jumping in. That’s the first confirmation to enter a short trade.

Now, let’s take a look at the next footprint, this one.

This footprint again shows negative Delta, and again, there’s a divergence. See, it’s a bullish candle, but Delta is negative. There are more volumes of aggressive sellers than aggressive buyers, so sellers are dominating.

Well, I shouldn’t say there are more aggressive sellers. I should say that there is more volume from aggressive sellers, but you get the picture, right?

So, in this footprint, sellers are dominating even though the price is still rising.

One thing to notice here is those huge orders at the bottom of the footprint: 158. As you can see, it’s quite a big number and unusually large. My software prints this little red dot here, telling us that this is an unusually heavy volume for this instrument and for this time of day. So, somebody big, a strong seller, entered at this level, right? That’s another confirmation.

Now, here comes the next footprint, and here we see that sellers started to jump in. We have aggressive sellers, and you can see them on the bid side of the footprint, especially here, with 266 contracts. Again, my software prints this red dot here, which means a big player is entering the market, or specifically, a big seller.

In this case, Delta is massively negative, but there’s no divergence because the candle is bearish. All right, no divergence. The price is starting to fall, and sellers look like they are jumping in.

One more thing to notice is all those imbalances. See those black lines here? Those are imbalances. They tell us that sellers are dominating and that they are much more aggressive than buyers.

The software always compares those two cells diagonally. If the one on the left is three times or more larger than the one on the right, it marks it with this black sign as an imbalance, right? That means sellers are much more aggressive than buyers.

So, we have those selling imbalances, a huge seller here, and massively negative Delta. That’s a huge confirmation for a short trade entry.

The next footprint again brings negative Delta, with big players jumping in here and here. You can identify them using those red dots that my software will print for you, or you can identify them by reading the numbers here on the footprint chart.

What’s important here is that the heavy volumes are shifting and moving downwards. See? Heavy volumes were traded at the bottom of this candle. So, the volume is kind of shifting downwards. That’s another sign that sellers are jumping in, that the market is reversing here, and that it’s ready to drop.

So, at this point, you should already be in your short trade, at the latest by the close of this candle right here. Ideally, even sooner.

I think that when you saw this footprint, it should have been clear enough to jump in because there were those imbalances, big sellers, and massively negative Delta, right?

One more thing I want to show you is that if we go back to the first footprint we covered, we were talking about the buying imbalances here. See those buying imbalances? Everything looked like the buyers should continue to push the price upwards.

But if it’s not like this, if we see buying activity at the top of a candle like this, with everything pointing towards the price continuing to go up, but the price does the opposite, Delta starts to drop, and the price starts to drop as well, then those guys in here are called trapped buyers.

Those guys are called trapped buyers because they tried to push the price up but didn’t succeed, and the price started to drop. Those buyers are trapped here, and they need to exit their positions. When they do, they’ll help fuel the sell-off even more because they’ll need to sell in order to get rid of their long positions from here.

Okay, so trapped buyers are another confirmation that the price will reverse. I would say that at this point, when the price starts to drop, it’s clear that those guys are trapped buyers, that they are trapped here, and that they will need to exit their positions.

All right, so that’s how we follow the big players using Order Flow. We look for the big orders, which my software highlights with red dots, like here, here, or here. You can also see those orders on a simple footprint chart.

We look for changes in Delta or Delta Divergence, when the price goes one way and Delta goes the other way. We look for imbalances, like in here. We look for shifts in volume, like in here. We can also look for trapped bars, or trapped traders, like in here.

So, those are the concepts I like to trade with, and they help me understand what’s actually going on in the market.

Let me show you how this trade played out and where I exited.

So, we’re back on the 30-minute chart. That red line here was the resistance level. As you can see, there’s also this red dot on the 30-minute chart, showing big players, specifically big sellers. From there, the price started to drop.

Let me show you where I exited the trade, okay?

I think I exited the trade a bit sooner than I should have because I closed it here, at the beginning of this volume zone. I was afraid that the price might turn and react to this heavy volume cluster, so I exited the trade here. This was my take-profit level.

When I look at it now, maybe I should have waited a little longer and exited the trade here because this is the beginning of a second heavy volume zone.

And at this point, there was this green bubble. See? Somebody big was entering the market, a big buyer. The best way to use my indicator would have been to simply wait for the big buyer to show up here and exit the short trade at this point.

But this is in retrospect. It’s much easier when you look at it retrospectively. It’s much harder when you’re trading live because your money is on the line.

So, anyway, my rule for take-profit placement is to exit the trade at the first barrier standing in the way. The first barrier was definitely this volume cluster, so that’s why I exited the trade here.

Even so, it was a very nice trade.

Now, as I was saying, this software of mine, which is called Big Players Radar, will be coming out in a couple of days. It will be free for all our members who have my Order Flow Pack and Combo Pack.

Let me quickly show you how you can get them.

If you go to my website, trader-dale.com, and click this button, Trading Courses and Tools, it will take you to this page.

If you get the Order Flow Pack, the new software you saw in this video will be included in the Order Flow Pack.

Also, if you guys have the Combo Pack, you can get it at the bottom of this page. It consists of all the packs I have, including all four of my educational and indicator packs. You can get all of them at the bottom of this page.

This software will be included in the Combo Pack as well.

Okay? It’s a lifetime license and a very, very cool software for spotting big players.

Thanks for watching the video. I hope you like it, and I’ll see you next time. Until then, happy trading!